


Dropping Anchor in a Storm

by jestbee



Series: Ships verse [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 10:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17364158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestbee/pseuds/jestbee
Summary: Phil wakes in the early hours to a thin beam of sunlight breaking through his curtains, and the soft sound of Dan breathing by his side.He should be able to bask in the peace and stillness of the room, but his brain won't let him do that today.





	Dropping Anchor in a Storm

**Author's Note:**

> An anon sent be the prompts, "You can't just sit there all day" and "I don't want you to stop" and this story came in to my mind unbidden. I'd wanted to revisit these two for a while, and I know there's a story I want to tell about Phil's road to therapy, to the place we find him in Hoist the Sail, and beyond, so here is just a part of that.
> 
> Set a year after [Ships that Pass in the Night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11266017) and a year before [Hoist the Sail](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15031664)
> 
> A massive thank you to i-am-my-opheliac and charlottekath who talked me down from being too nervous to post this one

Phil wakes in the early hours to a thin beam of sunlight breaking through his curtains, and the soft sound of Dan breathing by his side. 

This is life for him now, at least as often as he'll allow it to be, and he should be able to bask in the peace and stillness of the room, appreciate it for what it is, but his brain won't let him do that today. 

He can feel the dull thud of his heart in his chest. He isn't sure if it's going any faster but it certainly feels like it's beating harder. The pulse of it thrums against his breastbone and in the side of his neck. 

His stomach is churning over, a familiar twinge of dread creeping up his spine like something bad is going to happen. He's scared, and though it is too early to be awake he can't rest, his mind going over and over what it could be that is making him feel this way and yet finding nothing to be particularly scared about. 

He rolls over against the solid, warm wall of Dan's back and pushes his face into the creased cotton of the t-shirt he'd slept in. It's just about autumn, and while it's still early enough in the year to be this light in the mornings, there has been a creeping chill in the air the past couple of nights that means Dan has stopped sleeping shirtless.

Thankfully, though the room is cold, Dan always runs hot. The warmth of his body feels nice against Phil's skin but it isn't enough to numb him to the storm raging in his head. 

Dan makes a small humming sound and brings his hand up to cover Phil's on his chest. Phil wants to say good morning, or something, but his mouth is dry and the words slip away from him. He buries his head a little closer and breathes him in, thankful he's here. 

Dan doesn't always stay over, though he does more often that not recently. They still have separate flats even though they've technically been together for a year. Dan has floated the idea of them moving in together once or twice, but it hasn't quite happened yet. 

"Morning," Dan says. his voice is rough with sleep, rumpled like the rest of him. Phil adores it. 

Phil tightens his grip around Dan's waist and finds himself making a small whining noise he hadn't intended. He hates it when he wakes up like this, when the whole world feels too big and too scary and like something, _something_ is coming, he just doesn't know what. 

"Oh," Dan says.

Then he's turning in Phil's arms, rolling on to his side to face Phil and hooking a knee up and over Phil's leg, his thigh pressing against Phil's hip. The weight of it is nice, Phil likes the sensation of being held under Dan's body, pinned to a place so that he doesn't have to think about moving. 

"Bad day?"

Dan doesn't sound like he's accusing Phil of anything, or asking him for anything other than a simple acknowledgment of what is going on inside his head, but it makes Phil sad anyway not to be able to tell him. If only it was so easy. 

Phil can only nod as he tries to dodge Dan's gaze, because he's looking very intently. 

He's familiar, always, but sometimes Phil looks at him and could swear he looks a little different. He's been so many things over the time they've known each other, stranger, friend, even a threat. But now... now he's something else entirely, and has been for a while, but Phil still struggles to place it, to work out what Dan really is in the grand scheme of everything if Phil can never really let his guard down. 

That in itself is enough to scare him, because what if he's never able to? What if he can't ever get to a point where he wants to be open about all that Dan means to him? 

Not that they're hiding it. They're not. Phil just isn't interested in putting his life out there like that again. 

Instead of trying to answer, Phil rolls into his chest and Dan's arms come up around him easily, a broad palm pressed to the space between his shoulder blades. He feels the rise and fall of his own breathing against the touch of Dan's fingers and tries to remember to keep it even. 

"Is this about the photos?"

Phil sucks in a breath but it doesn't come out again. He feels it, trapped in his throat, constricted and aching. 

Trust Dan to find the route to his fear before Phil can find it himself. The bottom falls out of his stomach, a sharp spike of dread like swirling acid. 

"Maybe," Phil says into the fabric of Dan's shirt. 

His breath is warm on his cheeks, thick, humid and suffocating but he doesn't want to lift his head, doesn't want to expose himself back to the light of the morning and the cold outside of Dan's arms. He just wants to stay here, wrapped up where nothing can touch him. 

"Are we getting up?"

Phil shakes his head. It's barely a movement, restricted as he is by the way he's pressed in so close, but Dan seems to understand. 

"Okay," Dan says. "Five minutes." 

Dan gives him fifteen minutes in the end, holding him close and breathing evenly so that Phil can match the rhythm. They've done this a few times now, Dan just holds him without expectations, lets him be in the moment as nothing but himself, and it's usually enough for Phil to work out the spiral of negativity he's caught in. 

But not today. 

Dan shifts away afterwards, smiling and offering him coffee, but Phil doesn't want to move. The very idea of leaving the cocoon of blankets is terrifying today. 

He wants Dan to stay too, but he knows that to ask would sound pathetic, dramatic even, and so he stays quiet when Dan slips out of the bed and pulls on the sweatpants he'd discarded on the floor. 

He has lots of clothes here. They're crammed in the bottom draw that Phil hadn't really intended to make clear for him. He'd put Dan's clothes in with his own for a while, sharing the space, but as his clothes were rotated out of the drawer when he came to put them away he put them back somewhere different. He'd come to think of it as _Dan's Drawer_ , the tiniest corner of his flat that didn't belong to him. 

Sometimes that scares him too. 

Dan brings him coffee a few minutes later, and places it on the bedside table.

"Are you going to get up?" he asks. 

"In a bit," Phil says, and reaches out a hand for the hot mug, being careful to keep the duvet pulled up over him as if exposing himself to the outside of it would spell something awful. Maybe it would.

Dan leaves him to it, but he doesn't make any sign of leaving the flat even though Phil is being a poor host. Instead, Phil can hear him pottering around the kitchen, perhaps clearing away the pots from their dinner last night, and then make his way to the living room. 

He's probably sat on his side of the couch. The one that's always been his from the moment he sat on it. Another part of Phil's flat that isn't his own. 

Phil puts his cup back on the bedside table and turns over on his stomach. He pulls the duvet up and over his head and wonders how long he can stay trapped under here before he runs out of oxygen. 

It's uncomfortably warm. He can smell the scent of his own skin mixed with the lingering notes of Dan's cologne on the sheets and he breathes in deeply. He likes it in here, dark and warm and alone with the memory of Dan if not his actual presence. 

But Dan isn't the answer to his problems. He doesn't have a magical ability to cure all of Phil's anxieties, Phil doesn't think anything ever will, and he won't hold Dan up as the thing that should, won't put a responsibility onto him that he has no way of living up to.

Especially because Dan doesn't get it right all the time. He's human, loud and opinionated and liable to think without speaking quite a lot of the time. He's not perfect, but they're muddling through. They're making it work, for the most part. 

Phil wonders if he's still waiting for the moment it all goes wrong.

He doesn't know how long he stays under the duvet. Long enough that he starts to drift a little. Not to sleep, but down into the depths of that numb, cold place that he goes to sometimes. When it feels like there is a barrier hovering over his skin, the world a little dull and desaturated. Somewhere cushioned and protected, where he doesn't have to think. 

It's long enough that Dan wanders back into the room to see where he is. 

"Phil," he says, making Phil jump and yank the duvet back down. 

The air is shockingly cold after the cloying heat underneath it. It rushes into his lungs, burning his throat on the way down. 

"You can't stay in here all day," Dan continues. 

Phil knows, logically, that he doesn't mean it to sound like a reprimand, but it does. It feels like he's a small child being told off for being lazy, or an awkward teen lingering too long in bed on a weekend. 

He half expects his mum to come in and start nagging him about staying up late playing video games. 

"I can stay where I like," Phil says. 

He can hear the bite in his voice, the venom. He wants to be a person who can be careful and considered with his actions but it's difficult, when he feels like this, not to listen to the voice in his head that tells him the whole world is against him. 

"Phil," Dan repeats, moving closer and sitting down on the side of the bed, the duvet is pinned down against his side but rather than feel protected, Phil feels trapped. 

"Don't." 

"Don't what? Care about you?" 

Phil rolls away, facing the other side of the room where Dan's drawer stares back. 

"The pictures aren't that bad," Dan says. 

He knows he's trying to be helpful, to coax him out of the dark, foul place he woke up in, but what started out as a unformed sense of dread is slowly developing into a full blown panic spiral. 

He feels like he’s caught in a storm of his own making, a dangerous rickety boat on tumultuous waves, thrashing in an unforgiving ocean. Phil's breaths come fast, and he hears the choked sob in his throat before he registers the tears on his face. He isn’t safe, he doesn’t _feel_ safe. Everything is uncertain and wrong and he doesn’t know how to deal with that any other way than just trying to hang on, stay still, ride the waves.

"Just... Just let me stay," Phil says. "Just for a bit, please." 

He feels Dan's hand land on his shoulder and his fingers squeeze gently. 

"Do you want me to stay?" Dan says. "I'll stay with you."

Phil considers it, thinking about Dan holding him for as long as he'd like and working through this, but his insides feel wriggly, something heavy descends in his stomach and he can't stand the idea of Dan coming down into the dark with him. 

Dan should always be in the light. The drawer across the room swims in Phil's vision and he closes his eyes so he doesn't have to look anymore. 

"I don't want you to stay," Phil says. 

Dan sits on the side of a bed for a few more minutes, and Phil can hear him suck in a breath a couple of times as if to say something, but eventually his weight lifts, mattress springing back, and he hears Dan leave the room and the door close with a click. 

Phil pulls the duvet back over his head and lets the warmth and the dark engulf him.

Phil must fall sleep. It isn't peaceful, and his dreams are plagued by something big yet unseen that he needs to run from but, as is so often the case in dreams, he can't seem to move his legs as fast as he needs to truly escape.

He wakes to a tight, pinched headache behind his eyes and he's too warm where the duvet is still mostly over his head. The light at the windows is bright now and he reaches over for his phone to see what time it is. 

His lock screen is a picture of a couch cushion Dan had bought him, with a galaxy print. Colourful, he'd said, like Phil, but aesthetic. Phil likes to think of it as having a picture of the two of them on there. At least, in some way. 

Across the centre of the picture, however, is a Twitter notification. 

**danisnotonfire:** i was just rummaging for batteries in the kitchen drawer and STABBED MY HAND ON A CACTUS WTF @amazingphil why did you put that there?

It's only dated half an hour ago, and while he could just be spinning a story for a tweet, something to entertain their ever-growing audiences, Phil presumes that Dan hasn't gone home. 

He's still here. 

He doesn't check the replies. No doubt fans have caught on to Dan saying _the_ kitchen and not _Phil's_ kitchen, and the fact that it is still relatively early in the day. 

The problem is that the more they share, the less they can be honest about and they end up painting a picture of things that can be interpreted too many different ways. 

They don't live together, but people think they do. They are together, which he imagines no one is really in the dark about, but they haven't said it. 

He doesn't care, not really, but saying it out loud, confirming it, feels like handing over a power to Dan that he doesn't necessarily want to. It's giving him all the tools to hurt him. 

He doesn't think Dan ever would, but he needs something to protect himself with anyway. 

Plausible deniability.

He hits reply, because even though he feels leaden and his brain is loudly telling him how much of a disappointment he is, he can at least pretend he's fine online. Which seems ironic, considering. 

**AmazingPhil:** oops I must have zoned out after watering it last night sorry

He doesn't address the kitchen thing, or even clear up why Dan is in his house so early. He just leaves it there for the world to do with what it will. He feels like he's fighting a losing battle anyway. 

Getting out of bed is difficult. The first time he puts his feets on the floor and lets them take his weight he feels a bit dizzy, like he's been still too long and now any movement feels too fast. 

He doesn't want to feel like this anymore, he's sick of the way his brain feels broken, like it malfunctions from time to time and the only way to get it back online is to fuck everything up. Reset it, burn his entire life down and build it back from the ground little by little. 

Dan is on the couch when he reaches the living room. He's got the galaxy cushion wedged in beside him and his laptop balanced on his knees. He looks like he fits there, not at all like an invader on Phil's carefully cultivated fortress. 

"Hey," he says. 

Dan looks up at him with a smile he doesn't deserve and shifts a notebook from the cushion next to him in a clear invitation for him to sit down. 

He does, still in his ridiculous pyjama bottoms and Dan still in his sweatpants because he hasn't been able to get to his clothes. 

"You're still here." 

Dan regards him lightly, "did you think I wouldn't be?" 

Phil picks up the galaxy cushion and holds it lightly in his lap. 

"I don't know. I think... I think maybe I always think you'll leave. Eventually." 

Dan reaches a hand out as if to touch him but seems to re-think himself half way through. Phil hates that, he hates that he's acted in a way that makes Dan think he can't reach out to comfort him.

Phil takes hold of his hovering hand and pulls it decisively towards him, linking their fingers. He wants no doubt in Dan’s mind that his touch is always welcome, he will always want him near, regardless of what twisted darkness is in his head. 

"I'm not going anywhere," Dan says. "Tell that voice in your head to shut the fuck up." 

Phil manages a weak smile, a watered down version of the one he wants to give. 

"I wish I could." 

Dan shifts, settling himself around so that he can face Phil, looking him right in the eye. 

"Is it better if I leave you alone when you're... I came in to see if you wanted to get up, like if maybe you needed me to-- But I can stop."

"I don't want you to stop." Phil shakes his head, squeezing Dan's hand with his own. "I'm sorry. I just..."

"The photos." 

"I was there!" Phil says, "I'd just gone in the shop. Why did they have to take the photos then?"

" _That's_ what you're mad about?" 

Phil shrugs, "I'm not mad." 

"Okay. Then you're... upset? Anxious, right, but I don't think it's just that?" 

"I don't..." Phil folds one leg up, hugging his knee with one arm while maintaining his grip on Dan's hand with the other. He speaks into the fabric of his pyjamas. "I don't know." 

"Okay. But... it's about the fact that it was just me and PJ in the pictures?" 

Phil nods.

"Oh." Dan's head tips a fraction to the left and a crease appears between his eyebrows. "I thought you were, you know, just worried about the general ever-present masses taking creepshots. I didn't think it was the... Phil. You know I love you." 

Phil lifts his head. It isn't that, of course it's not that. He knows Dan loves him. Yes, he worries that Dan will leave, that he'll realise Phil is too much trouble and that he deserves better, but he doesn't actually believe any of the stuff people are saying about why Dan was spotted out on the street with PJ. 

"I don't think you're into PJ," Phil says. "Obviously you're not. Besides, you weren't on a date with him, we were hanging out. I was just in the shop!"

"I know that. And you know that. But I thought maybe people saying it had, I don't know. Bothered you." 

"It has," Phil admits, realising in the moment how true that statement is. "It has bothered me, but not because I thought it was true."

"Then, and I'm sorry love, but I just don't get it."

Phil breathes, for a moment, and Dan lets him. He still feels heavy, like he's still carrying around whatever crap he woke up with, but he can put his thought into some sort of order now. 

"I guess I was a bit... Dan, I wanted to be in the photos."

"Right."

"No, I mean, I don't want people to be taking creepshots of me on the street. That's awful, I'll always wish people didn't do that because it makes me... I hate it. But if you had to be creepshotted on the street I wanted to be with you." 

"Oh." Dan bites his lip, and Phil can tell he's stopping himself from saying something he wants to. 

"Go on," he says. 

"Well... Phil, I think what you're saying is that you wish people knew you were there. That we were... and well- and this isn't a problem. It's never going to be a problem- but you're the one that doesn't want to tell anyone... about us."

"I don't."

Dan's teeth are on his bottom lip again. "I still don't get it."

He's being honest. He isn't trying to sugarcoat anything or pretend that he understands what Phil is saying. which is good, because Phil isn't entirely sure what he's saying so he'd have been concerned if Dan did. 

"Alright," Phil says, dropping his knee and letting go of Dan's hand. 

He needs to stand up for this, to put all the restless energy somewhere. Before he really intends to be, he's on his feet and pacing in front of his coffee table. 

"Alright. I'm sorry, I know I don't make sense. It's just that, well, logically I know that I don't want to... I said I wasn't ever going to be the type of person to put myself out there. And I'm not." Phil turns on his heel and heads back the other way. "But I saw those pictures and, irrationally, I wished that I could be that type of person. Just once. That someone would take a picture of us out on the street, maybe on a date, and people would know what it was. What we are to each other."

Dan stands up, coming to meet Phil as he makes his way across the room. 

He doesn't say anything, just pulls Phil towards him and folds him in his arms once again. 

"Sometimes," Phil says into the space between Dan's head and shoulder, his voice hushed so that he's talking only into Dan's ear. "I can't believe that you... I'm not easy to be with. I know that. And I can't believe my luck that you've decided I'm worth it."

"Are you kidding me?" He feels Dan shake his head and then pull away to look him in the eyes. His face is incredulous, his mouth pulled into a smile. "I've been obsessed with you since the moment I met you. If anyone is lucky around here Phil Lester, it's me."

It's an old argument. Phil's poor self esteem held up against the constant joke of Dan's fanboying. They're both lucky, really, to have found each other in the awful vastness of the world, regardless of how that happened. 

"I don't really want to tell them," Phil says, hushed like its a confession. 

"I never said you had to."

"But... Can I just feel sad about that sometimes? Scared that one day I might?"

"You're allowed to feel however you feel." 

Phil smiles a little bit at that. "You sound like a therapist." 

Dan shrugs, "Yeah. Mine is always saying things like that. But it's true, Phil, you're allowed your feelings. You just have to... you know, take stock of them. There is no wrong or right way to feel, but you can control how you react to what you’re feeling."

“I know,” Phil says, “And I’m sorry about this morning.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Dan says, “I just meant… sometimes it’s hard to watch. You feel anxious because your brain is a dick but then you spend even longer beating yourself up about it. Because you want to somehow magically have a brain that doesn’t do that. But Phil… your brain _does_ do that. You need to learn what to do when it does, rather than let it consume you. At least… that’s what my therapist says.”

"Sounds like some good advice."

"Yeah," Dan says, moving to pick up his laptop. "It is. Have you thought any more about--" 

"Not yet," Phil says, cutting him off, because he's heard that sentence before. This isn’t the first time Dan has mentioned Phil going to therapy himself. The proper kind, not the short session they’d given him in the hospital that was just enough to declare him safe enough to discharge. "One day, maybe. Probably. Kind of inevitable I think, but I just need to... work up to it."

"Alright," Dan nods. "I'll be here when you decide you're ready." 

Phil looks at him. He's in his pyjamas in the middle of Phil's living room and he looks like he belongs there. His hair is a mess, his t-shirt is baggy and his sweatpants are the light grey ones that have definitely seen better days. Here he is, stripped back and slotting into the fabric of Phil's life like he's always been there. Like he always should be.

There is a spot on his couch and a drawer in his room that are _Dan's_. Now the full light of the day is shining on him through the window, that feels a lot less scary than it did in the early hours of the morning. 

"You will," Phil says, "won't you."

Dan smiles, "Always, Phil."

Phil likes that Dan fits here, that maybe one day he could belong here for good. Maybe one day he'll have space in the wardrobe and a desk of his own in the office. Maybe there will be a filming area in monochrome somewhere. It could be here or another flat entirely, Phil isn’t sure. 

By then maybe Phil will share his own pictures of them on the street, freely and without care. Maybe then, the whole world will know just what Dan means to him. Until then, this will have to be enough. Dan in his living room, walking through his flat like he belongs and staying even when Phil tells him he doesn’t want him to.

"Did you really stab your hand on a cactus?" Phil asks, following Dan out of the room. 

"Yes," Dan says, holding up his palm for Phil to inspect even though there is nothing there to see. "You spoon. Don't leave it in the drawer next time for unsuspecting Dans to injure themselves on." 

Phil laughs, and he can feel some of the darkness from this morning lifting. It will always be there, lingering in the back of his mind, but for the moment the storm has quieted. He follows Dan wherever it is he’s going, and lets himself be anchored right here, in this moment.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](http://jestbee.tumblr.com)


End file.
